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Perils of indifference elie wiesel
Holocaust short story essay
Holocaust short story essay
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Indifference; a lack of sympathy. This is a word of power that describes how a person may watch or know of violence that occurs, yet not take action till it is too late. WWII survivor, Elie Wiesel, creates a dramatic speech, The Perils of Indifference, in which this one word is presented to a group of world leaders. He provides valid examples of how it is our fault, as a united people, for the evil that revealed itself in the last era. One example used in his speech is Auschwitz, a German concentration camp where its prisoners were slaughtered with no remorse from their murderers. The author, though only mentioning this place once, captures his audience as they are silently reminded of what happened and how indifference is to blame for the disaster. Auschwitz is a grand example in Elie Wiesel’s speech and shows how indifference was to blame and that the world leaders are to blame, for this one concentration camp defines that one word with accurate evidence such as by what happened within its walls, how the nation leaders let Hitler’s Third Reich grow, and how they did not liberate or delay it before the lives of innocent people were exterminated The horrors in Auschwitz were dark and twisted, and he uses the emotional tension to show what we let happen within those walls. Prison doctors, such as Josef Mengele, would experiment on prisoners with new types of drugs, or in pressure chambers. Mengele also conducted multiple twin dissections and would often kill for no apparent reason other than intimidation, giving him the nickname “The Angel of Death”. Between medical barracks and crematorium stood the “Black Wall”, where German soldiers executed hundreds of prisoners. But the prisoners were not only captured Jews. All who opposed H... ... middle of paper ... ...ow and expand before good prevails. It has been a trait passed down generation after generation and must be eradicated in order for our race to be at its fullest. Works Cited "Auschwitz." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., 10 June 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013. . "Auschwitz Bombing Controversy." Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013. . Bulow, Louis. "Gate to Hell, Auschwitz." Auschwitz, Nazi Death Camp. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2013. . "Hitler's rise and fall: Timeline." The Open University. Open University, 26 Apr. 2005. Web. 9 Jan. 2014. .
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
Being confined in a concentration camp was beyond unpleasant. Mortality encumbered the prisons effortlessly. Every day was a struggle for food, survival, and sanity. Fear of being led into the gas chambers or lined up for shooting was a constant. Hard labor and inadequate amounts of rest and nutrition took a toll on prisoners. They also endured beatings from members of the SS, or they were forced to watch the killings of others. “I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time” (Night Quotes). Small, infrequent, rations of a broth like soup left bodies to perish which in return left no energy for labor. If one wasn’t killed by starvation or exhaustion they were murdered by fellow detainees. It was a survival of the fittest between the Jews. Death seemed to be inevitable, for there were emaciated corpses lying around and the smell...
Speeches are given for a purpose. Whether it is for persuasion, or education, or even entertainment, they all target certain parts of people’s minds. This speech, The Perils of Indifference, was given by Elie Wiesel with intention to persuade his audience that indifference is the downfall of humanity, and also to educate his audience about his conclusions about the Holocaust and the corresponding events. He was very successful in achieving those goals. Not only was the audience enlightened, but also President Bill Clinton, and the First Lady, Hillary Clinton, themselves were deeply touched by Wiesel’s words.
In the eyes of Elie Wiesel, author of Night, indifference whether it be in relationship abuse or another problem, is mentally damaging and needs to be eliminated. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel illustrates how indifference can harm the mind of the victim when he says, “Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live,” (Night 34). In this, Wiesel is speaking of his first night in Auschwitz. When he mentions silence he is referring to the indifference that the Jews in concentration camps faced from the rest of the world. Wiesel refers to that night as the time he lost his desire to live because he saw so much indifference toward the suffering of the inmates and the horrific things that were happening to them. After this, his desire to stay alive was destroyed because he watched as the world stood by, indifferent to the senseless murder of millions. Throught this, Wiesel illustrates that indifference will impact people for the rest of their lives. Because indifference
How can inhumanity be used to make one suffer? The book Night by Elie Wiesel is about a young Jewish boy named Elie who struggles to survive in Auschwitz, a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Throughout the memoir, there are many instances where inhumanity is portrayed. The theme seen in this novel is inhumanity through discrimination, fear, and survival. Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy, lived in Sighet during World War II with his mother, father, and two sisters, and he is very religious and wanted to study Judaism.
"Theresienstadt: Spiritual Resistance and Historical Context". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial
To the people in the concentration camps, apathy is a “harsher punishment” (Wiesel) than anger or rage, because anger has feelings in it, while indifference just makes a suffering person feel even smaller and more insignificant. Indifference in humans potentially goes against religion, because it blurs the lines between “light and darkness” (Wiesel). Throughout his speech at the Millennium Lectures, Elie Wiesel both enlightens on the consequences of apathy towards those who need help, and inspires hope for a better future.
The unimaginable actions from German authorities in the concentration camps of the Holocaust were expected to be tolerated by weak prisoners like Wiesel or death was an alternate. These constant actions from the S.S. officers crushed the identification of who Wiesel really was. When Wiesel’s physical state left, so did his mental state. If a prisoner chose to have a mind of their own and did not follow the S.S. officer’s commands they were written brutally beaten or even in severe cases sentenced to their death. After Wiesel was liberated he looked at himself in the mirror and didn’t even recognize who he was anymore. No prisoner that was a part of the Holocaust could avoid inner and outer turmoil.
Rubenstein, Richard L. After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992. Print.
No one understands such a dreadful experience as the Holocaust without shifting in the way you were before. In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, the author defines his suffering at the hands of Nazis. Taken with his family in 1944, they were directed to Auschwitz to come before the dishonorable selection. There, Elie parted from his mom and sister leaving him with his father who was too busy to spend any time with his son before the camp. Being under the Nazis' control, Elie and his father moved to several camps. The Nazi command “deprived Elie...of the desire to live..., which murdered his God and soul and turned my dreams to dust” (32).
"Introduction to the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, D.C. Web. 07 Dec. 2011. .
“BBC TWO unravels the secrets of Auschwitz.” BBC. British Broadcasting Corporation, 12 Mar. 2004. Web. 4 Mar. 2014
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. The Web. The Web.
Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps during World War Two, including Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Many who were sent to the concentration camps did not survive but those who did tried to either forgot the horrific events that took place or went on to tell their personal experiences to the rest of the world. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi wrote memoirs on their time spent in the camps of Auschwitz; these memoirs are called ‘Night’ and ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. These memoirs contain similarities of what it was like for a Jew to be in a concentration camp but also portray differences in how each endured the daily atrocities of that around them. Similarities between Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi’s memoirs can be seen in the proceedings that
Setting out with his arrest by the fascist militia in December of 1943, the text conforms to Primo Levi’s experience in the succeeding twelve months as an inmate in the National Socialists’ Monowitz- Buna concentration camp, seven kilometers east of Auschwitz. Upon arriving in the camp, the first-person narrator, Primo Levi, who holds a doctorate in chemistry, embarks on a world that renders him astonished; simply by making literary notes to Dante’s Inferno can he manage to draw its contours. After the degrading intake procedures, he actualizes that the objective of the place to which they have been brought is the psychological and physical devastation of the inmates. Inmate Levi, “Number 174517,” discovers more about the camp and the inhumane circumstances there....